A Little Too Late
by Kimagure
Summary: Ron pays Percy a visit and has a lot on his mind. Very much a character-ish type sketch. *Incestuous and slashy thoughts*


JKR owns Harry Potter and almost everything else.  
  
In case you missed it in the summary, this contains incestuous thoughts as well as slashy thoughts. If this squicks you, do us both a favor and hit the back button. Enough shit happens in the world…do you really want to add to the negativity by lashing out at people you don't even know?  
  
This is an AU post-Voldemort fic, and Ron is about 23 or 24. If you saw this on the mailing list, this is also a (in my opinion) heavily revised version of this fic. I like this one better. ^-^  
  
Anyway, on to the fic…  
  
A Little Too Late  
  
Ron Weasley stood, uncertainly and more than a bit reluctant, in front of the door to his older brother's flat. In fact, he'd been standing outside the flat more than a few minutes, not quite ready to knock and not quite up to the errand his mother had sent him on.  
  
Everyone in the family, of course, was moderately concerned about Percy. They all knew he worked too hard, worked too long; didn't give himself vacations and refused to accept help from anyone in any form.  
  
But that was just the way Percy was, the way he'd always been.  
  
*Overachiever.* Ron snorted softly as he contemplated the less than solid looking front door. Percy had set the bar so high that he—along with Fred, George, and Ginny—hadn't even bothered trying to compete. It was obvious that Percy was in a class all of his own when it came to accomplishments and garnering their parents' approval. As it was, his mother thought Percy practically walked on water.  
  
Neither parent ever said they had favorites. Ron knew that they would protest profusely if anyone tried to claim that they did. But he also knew better. He'd had two eyes after all, as a child. He knew what the dynamics were, and in some cases, he even knew why they were. To his mother's way of thinking, Percy was the most vulnerable of her children. It was obvious in everything she said and everything she did.  
  
Maybe it had been parts of the war that Ron had been too young to remember that were the source behind her worry, or maybe it was just the fact that Percy was so radically different from all of her other children. Ron only knew that Percy was the one she tried to coddle, the one whose temperature she obsessively checked, the one she would doggedly nag to eat…  
  
She tried to keep Percy tied close to her apron strings. When he was younger, Ron supposed he hadn't quite grasped what something like that meant. He'd whispered nasty words under his breath when his mother fussed. Frustrated that Percy always had her attention, and seething over the fact that in those instances Percy's life was lived solely to reassure her. Ron had hated the fact that Percy's world hinged on making their parents happy.  
  
And he had hated that his parents never saw it that way.  
  
Not that any of that mattered now. Years had passed and they were all mature adults now. At least in theory. The last week at home had him wondering sometimes about the Twins.  
  
But despite all that, here he was anyway, standing outside Percy's door because of his mother's worry. Percy had missed Sunday dinner, which was a bit odd all considering. It had been Ron's first visit home since the End.  
  
He liked to think of it that way too, in capital letters. The end of the war, the end of running and hiding with his friends, the end of being in danger and having those he loved in danger. It was just the end of so many things, and he wasn't quite sure how to take the sweeping changes. He'd gotten used to living with Harry and Hermione. The forced vacation that the Ministry had given their aurors had left him at a bit of a loss.  
  
Because Harry and Hermione *were* his family.  
  
They had been for the six years he'd intentionally walled himself off from his own in order to keep them safe from the activities he'd been involved in. It was yet another way that the End was an end of something profound in his life. Harry was off with Sirius at this moment, rebonding with his old guardian and reestablishing that relationship. Hermione had gone back to Muggle society and back to her parents for a well deserved reunion. And he himself had come back to the Burrow to reestablish all the relationships that Voldemort's last years of terror had put on hold.  
  
He loved his family, he thought as he knocked tentatively on Percy's door, but they were strangers to him now. They weren't the same people that he'd left all those years ago. *He* wasn't the same person that he'd been all those years ago. And while his reunion with his family at the Burrow should have been event of incredible joy and happiness, he often found himself up late at night holding back the tears and missing his auror family so intensely it hurt. Because they understood him implicitly.  
  
And there was just something that was very upsetting about the fact that his flesh and blood didn't.  
  
The door flew open, and Ron found himself standing face to face with a rather startled looking Percy, and he couldn't help but look startled back. The years had obviously not been terribly kind to Percy. Worry lines played at his older brother's brow, and those blue eyes that Percy insisted on hiding behind glasses looked dull and almost lifeless. Tired, Ron decided as he gave Percy a half hearted grin, his brother looked utterly exhausted.  
  
"Ron?"  
  
"Yeah, hi Percy." He couldn't help but grin for real this time as Percy blinked in surprise at his deepened voice while taking in the rest of him. He'd still been a gangly half grown teenager when he'd made the decision to go off with Harry and Hermione. It had been the most difficult decision of his life, but he'd thought that the sacrifice had been worth it…at least most of the time he did. Watching as Percy gaped at him, he wasn't so sure. He'd grown four inches since his family had last seen him, and he'd filled out more than a little from the work that he'd had to do as an auror and from the hand to hand combat workouts he and Harry indulged in.  
  
"Mum sent me. You know how she gets worried and all, and when you didn't show on Sunday…" He shrugged.  
  
"Oh." Percy's shoulders sagged considerably. "Well, she shouldn't have worried. I'm perfectly fine as you can see. I am sorry that I missed your first dinner back home, however."  
  
"S'okay." He shrugged again. It was a bad habit he'd picked up from Harry he supposed. "Do you mind if I come in?" Percy nodded self consciously, and Ron could feel old feelings resurfacing at the familiar gesture. Anger at his parents, anger at Percy for pandering to their unrealistic expectations. That no matter what Ron or the Twins or even Bill and Charlie said Percy would never see what was obvious to everyone else in the family.  
  
"Oh yes, of course…" Percy stepped aside, letting him in reluctantly. "Have a seat on the sofa, and I'll get some tea started."  
  
"Make it a shot of whiskey and you have a deal." Ron joked lightly, trying to release some of the awkward nervousness that was creeping into the way Percy was moving and looking at him. Almost as if on cue, Percy shot him a haughty glance before shutting the door behind him and moving to the kitchen.  
  
And that was the Percy he was used to, the Percy that he'd known.  
  
The names that he'd called Percy so many times in the past when his anger at it all had gotten the better of him. Do-gooder. Mama's Boy. The brother who was so far above it all, but so ingrained in the dynamics that he was completely untouchable. And Ron knew because he'd tried. He may have walled himself off from his family for the last six years, but that sort of thing had been something Percy had mastered ages ago. As far as Ron knew, few people—if any—were allowed into his older brother's confidence. That was the way Percy was, and this was the Percy he knew.  
  
The rest of the Percy he'd known from his childhood days, however, seemed to have vanished into the mists of time Ron noted with a great deal of shock as he picked his way towards the living room. Percy had always been fastidiously clean. His obsessive neat nick tendencies had even driven his mother crazy on occasion.  
  
Apparently that was no longer a problem since Percy's flat more resembled a nuclear fallout than a "Witches Better Home and Gardens" magazine. Papers lay strewn about all over the place and Ron had to pick his way carefully across the room to the sofa so he didn't step on any of the half organized looking piles. As it was, he had to shove a pile of dirty laundry off the end of the sofa just in order to make room for himself.  
  
"It's a bit messy, isn't it?" Percy announced as he handed Ron a teacup and then carelessly shoved a pile of papers off the sofa before sitting down. Almost in a trance, Ron watched the papers flutter to the ground, adding to the already enormous clutter of things there. Old towels and gym shoes next to what looked like dirty silverware and ministry reports. Maybe his mother had actually been right to worry this time.  
  
He brought the cup to his lips and sipped...And then sputtered as the whiskey burned a trail down his throat. Casting an uncertain glance at Percy, Ron wondered idly what had happened. His mother hadn't mentioned any huge upheavals in Percy's life, and Ron felt sure that she would have since he'd been hearing "Percy this…" and "Percy that…" from the moment he'd walked back into the Burrow. Sometimes Ron wondered if his mother even realized what was going on between her and her favorite son. Because even from where he was standing—a virtual stranger to his family now—he could see that Percy only shared select aspects of his life with her. With any of them either.  
  
Boasts about work, achievements and successes there flowed freely from Percy's lips, Ron was sure. But nothing that was ever personal. Whether it was because they were never good enough to be confidants or what Ron was never entirely certain, but Percy never deigned to share anything with them. Maybe from someone else's perspective it would seem that they'd been the ones to isolate and alienate Percy.  
  
But the truth was that Percy had been the one to push them away first.  
  
And while maturity might have dictated that he had needed to approach his brother differently, or try to be more considerate and understanding…he'd been a kid. And at the time, it had hurt. A lot. So, for better or worse, he'd lashed back the only way he'd known how. With anger. With pettiness. With things, that even now, years after the fact, he still felt guilty for saying.  
  
But back to the matter at hand.  
  
Something major had to have happened, because the Percy he'd known would *never* have given him liquor. Much less liquor in a tea cup.  
  
"You grew a beard." Percy stated quietly before sipping his own cup. And Ron couldn't help but wonder what it was that Percy was drinking.  
  
"Yeah, did that my first year as an auror. Hermione said it made me look like a lumberjack and Harry never let me live it down." He explained a bit nervously now, unsure of how to act around this new unknown version of his older brother.  
  
And really, he never had known quite how to act around Percy.  
  
He'd known Harry since he was eleven. He'd lived with Harry—arguing and wrestling and laughing together—for six years. And despite the fact that they looked absolutely nothing alike, Harry was his brother. In every sense of the word but blood. Harry just wasn't a friend who he'd become really close to, Harry was family, and that was all there was to it.  
  
But that wasn't the way things were between him and Percy. They were blood relatives. Brothers. But Ron had never felt that there was more of a brotherly connection between them than genetic. In fact, the little insidious voice that he chose to ignore most of the time always seemed to whisper that with Percy there was something…different there.  
  
When he was younger, it had been envy. Percy who could never do wrong in his parents' eyes. The brother who was always singled out for praise. It had irked him, even as he had realized that he didn't *want* to be like Percy. But it was more than Percy's successes and the praise he got for them that bothered Ron.  
  
It had been the way Percy had talked to *him*. As if he were always a child, sometimes as if he were a backwards child, who needed to be reprimanded or to have things explained in simple words. Despite the years between them and the differences in maturity, Ron had wanted to be considered his older brother's equal. The role of 'little brother' had not ever settled well with him in regards to Percy. He hadn't minded the treatment from Bill or Charlie; it was even okay from the twins. But when Percy did it, he'd always seen red. It had been insult added to injury.  
  
And as the years had gone by and he'd gone from childhood into puberty? His remarks against Percy had gotten progressively vapid and biting. He'd known that. But time had changed more things than he'd ever let on to anyone. By the time he'd hit puberty, Percy had all but finished growing and filling out. He'd found himself sometimes noticing the way Percy's hair shined when he was out studying in the sunshine, or how his older brother's shoulders had widened. And occasionally, he'd catch himself daydreaming in potions or in divination about how cute Percy had looked at the Halloween before when Bill and Charlie had forced him into a dragon tamer costume complete with leather vest and pants.  
  
But it had been more than looks. It had been the way that he'd admired and envied Percy for his grasp over his emotions while Ron struggled so hard with his own. It was the way in which Percy was so willing to give everything of himself to everyone else, but yet wouldn't ever consider or see Ron as anything other than a younger brother. It had been the way that Percy was always so protective of those he loved, even as he worked hard to pretend that he wasn't. He'd fallen in love with all of Percy's quirks. He'd watch Percy—sometimes witnessing his older brother's more vulnerable moments—wanting more than anything to wrap his arms around him, to be the one who got to hold Percy close and offer comfort. He wanted to be the one to give Percy something more than comfort. And he'd hated Percy for it. Hated himself for feeling the way he did about his older brother.  
  
The silence stretched out uncomfortably between them and Ron had to bite his tongue to keep from making disparaging remarks. It wasn't Percy's fault that Ron found him attractive. It wasn't Percy's fault that he haunted Ron's dreams sometimes. It wasn't Percy's fault that he was a sick fuck who apparently lusted after his own flesh and blood.  
  
Besides, the last six years had matured him. And he'd been forced to learn, time and time again to own up to his emotions, because burying the uncomfortable ones like he had done in childhood could have gotten him killed as an auror. He couldn't pin the blame for his feelings on Percy anymore. It wasn't his older brother's fault that Ron wished for a quite different relationship than that of siblinghood.  
  
"Perce," the nickname sounded odd on his lips since the unspoken rule had always been that Bill and Charlie were the only ones allowed to call him that, "what's going on? What's the matter with you?" The words came out sounding gruffer than he'd intended.  
  
"Nothing's the matter. I'm fine. You know how she gets, she really shouldn't have worried." Percy repeated back the words Ron had said earlier back to him. Giving the room one cursory glance, Ron shook his head at Percy's words.  
  
"You're not fine. What's going on?" He asked, putting a hand on Percy's chin and forcing his older brother to look him in the eye, hoping at the same time that Percy wouldn't see how it affected him to have his older brother's full attention focused solely on him.  
  
"Oliver…" Percy swallowed hard before pulling away from Ron's hands and averting his gaze.  
  
"Oliver?" Ron prompted. "Oliver Wood?" He asked in what he hoped was an encouraging voice. He could vaguely remember Oliver and Percy hanging out together when they'd still been together in Hogwarts, and he remembered Harry commenting once or twice that Percy would watch practices sometimes and that he and Oliver usually left the locker room together.  
  
"Oliver was…He just…He…And then he left…" Percy's words trailed off and Ron watched as his older brother's shoulders sagged in while his hands shook with suppressed emotion.  
  
Oh…*oh*! "You and Oliver were…" Ron started off, his face contorting slightly as Percy nodded haltingly. "Percy…"  
  
"I'll reach over for him sometimes…it's always like three in the morning, but I just keep reaching because he's not there. Or I'll find myself making dinner, and I'll accidentally set the table for two people. Or…or I'll wait until six o'clock at night and just stare at the door waiting for him to walk in, apologizing for getting caught up at practice and forgetting the time…" The words broke off harsh and disjointed as Percy tried to keep himself from crying. "I drove him away. Like I do with everyone. Why he stayed so long in the first place, I'll never know. I certainly wasn't worth the effort." The words were quietly whispered, barely audible in the stillness, but Ron heard them all the same.  
  
Pushing the pile of junk off the sofa that stood between him and his older brother, he slid over pulling Percy up tightly against his chest. His older brother resisted, tensing up at the intrusion of personal space, and it almost broke Ron's heart to see Percy struggling against him. Struggling against receiving comfort from anyone. Living in the same self made, self destructive box his parents had fabricated way back when he'd still been in diapers. "Perce," he whispered in helpless entreaty.  
  
"Just leave me alone." The thin shoulders shook again, pushing off any gesture Ron offered as they curled in on themselves, blocking out the rest of the world. "God, just leave me alone…Please."  
  
Because Percy would—could—never accept his love.  
  
*****  
  
Well, had to go back and fix the glitch that Cairnsy mentioned. ^-^  
  
*hugs the people who reviewed* You rock, and thank you so much! ^-^ 


End file.
